After a significant delay saw Watch Dogs’ release date pushed back by several months, Ubisoft have now confirmed the release date for the game.

Despite the pre-release hype of the next-generation consoles, the PS4 and the Xbox One, which focused heavily on their specs,with people debating RAM, CPU and GPU speeds and sizes in an effort to discern a clear leader (in terms of technical power alone), what was more important to the media’s coverage and fans’ perception of the consoles before they made a big splash in last year’s holiday season was the games that they’d be running. New consoles can live and die by their early software offerings (just look at the Wii U for an example of this) which is why it’s so important for them to be able to run the best versions of multi-platform releases. One game in particular that was set to look extra slick and smooth on next-gen is the open world cybercrime action title, Watch Dogs, which was delayed last year, despite being originally planned as a launch title, but now, Ubisoft have finally confirmed the game’s new release date.

The Watch Dogs release date is May 27th, 2014, when the game will be out on both PS3 and PS4 (it has 60 minutes of extra gameplay on PlayStation) putting the game in prime sequel securing territory as the games industry famously suffers some what of a release drought during the Summer months due to publishers postponing titles until later in the year, for the pre-Christmas buying period. If Watch Dogs performs well in terms of sales upon release (and the hype around it as well as previous fan interest suggests that it will), Watch Dogs 2 could be confirmed within a month or so of the game’s release, with Ubisoft previously confirming that they would like to turn the game into a franchise.

That sequel would have to continue the plot detailed in the above Watch Dogs story trailer, with gamers finally being told that the reason for protagonist Aiden Pearce’s hacking ways is that he seeks revenge against the people who killed his daughter. He’s set to go about that by hacking his way through the city, with Pearce able to hack into bank accounts, security cameras, the city’s communication system and more to control things such as the road’s barriers. How the sequel would improve upon this is yet to be seen, so for now we’ll keep you posted on the first game in the Watch Dogs series once we know more.

]]>http://ps3maven.com/watch-dogs-release-date-announced/feed/1Watch Dogs Movie in the Works from Sony, Ubisofthttp://ps3maven.com/watch-dogs-movie/
http://ps3maven.com/watch-dogs-movie/#commentsSat, 31 Aug 2013 06:08:03 +0000JasmineHenryhttp://ps3maven.com/?p=10728Watch Dogs Movie in the Works from Sony, Ubisoft

While game movie tie-ins are usually quite naff, at Gamescom, Sony and Ubisoft have announced a Watch Dogs movie that could actually be quite good.

It’s a well known fact that movie tie-ins, be it of video games or even of books, are rarely any good. Movie developers love to deviate from the source material of a tie-in, much to fans’ dismay, with characters and entire storylines being thrown out of the window for sake of making a quicker and more ‘movie-worthy’ buck. Most notable of these tie-in disasters is Prince of Persia, which, also being a Ubisoft title, caught plenty of flack when the movie featured the titular Prince being played by Jake Gyllenhaal who didn’t seem to fit the original description. However, Ubi are trying their hand at game-related movies again, and, in an attempt to make their past misdoings right, Ubisoft will be working with Sony to make a Watch Dogs movie.

Of course, Watch Dogs isn’t even out yet (it’s set to make its debut on current and next-gen consoles this November) but its story, which centres around hacker Aiden Pearce as he inflicts his own brand of cybercrime onto the city of Chicago, is already proving to be quite popular. The partnership to bring the Watch Dogs movie to life, between Sony, New Regency and Ubisoft, was announced during Sony’s Gamescom presser, suggesting that Sony have enough faith in this film to devote an entire section of its marketing efforts to it.

Little is known on the plot of the Watch Dogs film but Jean-Julien Baronnet, the chief executive officer of Ubisoft Motion Pictures say that “[they are] confident [that they] can deliver a movie that builds upon the excitement that the game is already generating” suggesting that the movie will either feature Aiden himself, or at least borrow from the game of Watch Dogs quite a lot. We also know that the hacking featuring in Aiden’s smallscreen adventure will be kept intact for the its bigscreen outing as Hannah Minghella, the president of production for Columbia Pictures says that “The themes and open gameplay of Watch Dogs lends itself perfectly to the big screen. The game has intense action and adventure, but the story focuses on information and the control of information, which [the movie production team] think will lead to an exciting thriller.” which bodes well for fans of the series.

Hotly tipped as one of the best games of 2013 and being one of PS4’s most awaited titles, Watch Dogs is to get an hour’s worth of gameplay on Sony’s consoles.

Our phones have 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi too. Our details are scattered across the Internet on various sites that we’ve signed up to. Every electrical thing in our homes and workplaces is connected to the national power grid. Everywhere we turn, networks are being utilised. What if someone had a way to hack them? That’s the kind of society that Watch Dogs is made up of. Main man Aiden Pearce is a vigilante that knows just how to do that, and with a touch of a button he can hack the world.

With Watch Dogs being a game that lets you do such impressive cyber things as hacking people’s details from their phones to steal all of their money, all the way to employing the cities resources (automatic bollards, CCTV, etc.) to take down enemies. It’s no wonder that the yet-to-be-released game is popular. So popular is it that Ubisoft are offering up an extra 60 minutes of gameplay to players on PS3 and PS4 as an incentive for their interest.

Watch Dogs is an open world too so an extra excuse to explore and see its sights? Players of Sony’s current (and upcoming console) must be delighted.

While we have no idea what the hour’s worth of gameplay is set to include, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to go the Assassin’s Creed 3 way about it, as that game too, featured 60 minutes of gameplay, exclusive to PS3 players. If that deal is anything to go by, the exclusive stuff to make more use of Watch Dogs’ cyber-thrilling abilities will likely be an extra side mission or two, or a look at another important or interesting character, but hopefully whatever it is, it will tie into the incredibly intriguing main plot.

We’ll keep you posted when we know more but for now, here’s a trailer that both shows off a few of Watch Dogs’ features and clues viewers in on the DEDSEC edition of the game.